Though I suppose it isn’t the wound, really, to which an artist gives expression, but rather the wound is what moves the artist to give expression to a vision of reality to which they’ve been subjected, once the wound has done its work.
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I suppose what I am describing could also be said of the relationship between trauma and neurosis. For anything that is deeply felt, be it love or something else, is like a trauma inflicted upon the heart. A trauma will always leave its mark on you, for it causes an invisible wound. And it is in an artist’s nature to express that wound imaginatively.
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This is necessitated by the fact that something that is deeply felt always exceeds, in an individual’s experience of it as a truth, the ability of any conventional mode of communication to render it justly.
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It is always the most personal or deeply felt things, I think, that find their expression not by direct statement but by way of the imagination.
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I said it is an allegory, that story, and I think that is true, but it is also, I think, a love story, which came from some place deeply personal inside of me.
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I named those two cats Hardship and Sorrow, for that story is an allegory in the tradition of The Pilgrim’s Progress, though I did not realize this while I was composing it, and though I don’t think a reader needs to be aware of this, or find any significance in it if they are aware of it, in order to draw meaning from the story itself.
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Cats sometimes appear in my work too, though maybe more often in my visual art than in my fiction. In my graphic novel Sursum Corda, which makes up the second half of Diary Vol. 1, two black cats that are identical to each other, and that are usually, though not always, in the company of one another, seem to impress themselves on the shape of the narrative merely by their presence and by their watchfulness.
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This cat functions as a symbol in that story, though he also functions merely as a cat. Meaning, he is a cat first and foremost, and behaves in all the ways a reader would expect a cat to behave, and does not interrupt the dreamlike fabric of the world that the fiction comprises by drawing attention to himself as a symbol, which might have happened if the writer of the story was not very good, or was only beginning to learn how to write.
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Whenever I picture Franny, I see her under a blanket on that couch in the Glass family living room, her face hidden from me, as she is turned slightly away, with Bloomberg the cat cuddled beside her.
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There is also Bessie, their mother, who, of all the members of the Glass family, is my favorite.
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Something that occurred to me, after I wrote that last entry, is that it isn’t Zooey alone who helps Franny, but their deceased brother Seymour, through his words of advice that Zooey remembers and then (pretending to be yet another of their brothers, Buddy) delivers to Franny by calling her from a telephone that is in a separate part of the house.
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Of course, one can say that Holden is too hard on people, just like Franny is, and that is true, I think, but only because he does not see (the way Franny eventually does see, with the help of Zooey) that to compromise one’s ideals, at least in regard to what one expects of other people, is to allow yourself to love those people. And, as Zooey would have it, to love God in them as well.
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Holden, on the other hand, is even more alone. He does have his older brother D.B., but D.B., who once wrote a book called The Secret Goldfish, which contains a story that Holden loves, about a boy who won’t let anyone see his goldfish (for he has bought it with his own money) has, by the time Holden begins his narrative, gone out to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. Or, as Holden puts it, to “prostitute” himself.
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Franny, of course, has Zooey, and together, before that, they had Seymour, their eldest brother. But Seymour, by the time of the story, is dead by suicide, for he too has encountered the loneliness of the saint or truth seeker who exists without encouragement in this particular American landscape, and has succumbed to it. So that Franny and Zooey are somewhat alone in their pursuit of holiness or authenticity. And can now find solace only through imagination and memory, which are by no means inadequate, but which must function, in the individuals who call upon them, almost beyond their capacities to function, if those individuals are to sustain any optimism or joy, in lieu of a more sacramental existence.
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I think, in fact, if one were to describe how Salinger’s work participates in the tragic, one would have to mention how, in their quests for holiness, his protagonists discover, in the world in which they come of age and live, no corresponding holiness, or models of authenticity, in whom they might find encouragement and validation, but only a phoniness and insincerity, even in those people and places that purport to locate themselves outside the American mainstream.
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Remember that phoniness, which is anathema to holiness, is what you’ll most often find Salinger’s protagonists railing against.
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I don’t think it unreasonable to speak of holiness as the main preoccupation of all of Salinger’s protagonists, including Franny Glass, yes, but also even Holden Caulfield.
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An example of this, outside of Salinger’s work, is from the gospels, when Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple. The most visible element in that act, one might say, is anger, although, as a holy anger, it is shaped by kindness, and motivated by it.
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The heroism that is particular to Salinger’s characters is wisdom; and wisdom in action is not without some element of kindness, though the kindness itself may not be the most visible element of the act.
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This last trait is arguably the most important, at least where Salinger is concerned, for, when it appears in one of his characters, it can supersede any other trait, can coexist with any other trait, and, even when a situation does not directly call for it, it can guide the trait that is being called for, so that, if one of his characters is in possession of it, it seems to color everything that character does and says, like dye released into a bowl of water.